The language of globalization...

Taking your business into an overseas market is daunting, and any investment to enter these new international markets needs to be taken with great care and attention. First of all, is globalization a reality?

No one can deny that the rest of the world, outside of English speaking countries, is coming online faster than anybody's business these days. But how does that impact our businesses? How seriously do we have to listen to the call to "go global"? And how do we adapt our strategies to take full advantage of this wave of non English speaking people coming online?

Statistics state that only 29% of online users are English speaking. (i) Nevertheless, there is a perception in much of the business world that the entire internet speaks English, and so companies don't need a multilingual site or promotion.

Whether a person speaks English or not has nothing to do with the response to a marketing campaign. Dutch, Danes and Swedes read English very well, but they surf in their own language. They live their life in their own language, not in English. If you want to attract their attention, your site has to go where they are.

English is a native language to only seven countries in the world. It is not understood well in Germany, nor in Japan, and certainly not in Southern European countries, South America or China. The initial attraction of a product or service has to be generated in a local language, and the deeper into the population one goes, the more translation is necessary.

In summary

The issue of language comes down to a simple question: Is your company going to take the export market seriously? If so, there is no question as to whether to translate your websites: it is a requirement if you want to be taken seriously by foreign markets.

Do you have competitors who are taking the global markets more seriously? Europeans have been engaged in multi-cultural marketing for centuries, so it is not surprising to find that half of the European corporate sites are multilingual, including English.

If you do have competitors who are more serious about the world market than you are, you will gradually lose ground. It will be survival of the fittest.